The present invention relates to connectors comprising a housing into which at least part of the contact elements is to be inserted during manufacturing. The invention is best explained by referring to FIG. 1 showing a prior art right-angle connector.
In FIG. 1 a connector comprising a main-receptacle unit 1 and a tail-unit 2 are shown. The main-receptacle unit 1 comprises openings 4 within a housing 3 for accommodating a contact portion 5 of a contact element. The contact portion 5 is integrally made with a tail-conductor portion 6 and a pcb (printed circuit board) contact portion 7. Each contact portion 5 is shown to be of a female-type preloaded with a pre-load rib 10. The housing 3 is provided with a guiding member 9 to facilitate the insertion of another mating connector (not shown) to the main-receptacle unit 1. A fixing pin 8 is provided on the housing 3 for cooperation with a suitable opening in a printed circuit board (not shown) to which the right-angle connector is to be connected. It is to be understand that the phrase "printed circuit board" is used in a very broad sense and incorporates any substrate to which the connector is to be connected and which is provided with suitable conducting tracks.
The pcb contact portions 7 are shown to be suitable for through-mounting to a pcb, however, they can be provided in a form suitable for surface mounting, press-fit mounting or IDC.
In the prior art, the tail-unit 2 is provided with suitable openings for receiving each of the tail-conductor portions 6. Each of the tail-conductor portions 6 need be individually bent after insertion in the tail-unit 2 and be collected and held together by a separate press-block or waver. For high operating frequencies (clock-speed lower than 1 nanosecond), an increase in the cross-talk and reflection of signals result to deteriorate the signal integrity. This is partially due to the relatively long (and varying) tail length and also to the absence of adequate electrical shielding between adjacent tail-conductor portions 6 arranged in rows and columns. Moreover, the bending of individual rows of tail-conductor portions 6 is difficult and often results in reduced productivity.
Especially for high operating frequencies shielding between adjacent contact portions 5 and adjacent tail-conductor portions 6 will be required. A coaxial connector module provided with shield members to shield adjacent tail-conductor portions in a right-angle configuration is, e.g., described in European patent application 0,488,482 of the present applicant. In this prior art connector separate shield members made of thin, suitably folded metallic plates are provided which are inserted into the housing of the tail-unit. Although solving the problems of cross-talk manufacturing costs of such connectors are still high.
The object of the present invention is to provide a connector which can be easily made at relatively low costs and which is suitable for connector to a printed circuit board or the like at any predetermined angle.
A further object of the present invention is to provide such a connector in which shielding of each of the tail-conductor portions can also easily be provided at low costs.